


If It's Not Everything

by AWorldOfNonsense (Buildnganempire)



Series: A Loose Conglomeration [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-18
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-10-20 15:39:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10665693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Buildnganempire/pseuds/AWorldOfNonsense
Summary: Various Swan Queen one-shots. If you'd like to see one continued into a short story, please let me know.





	If It's Not Everything

**Author's Note:**

> Working on some writing prompts and attempting to get rid of massive writer's block. If you have a prompt you'd like me to do, please feel free to send it over.
> 
> This one-shot is fairly depressing, I know, but they won't all be that way, I promise!
> 
> Feedback is 100% appreciated!

“I’m either going out for ice cream or to commit a heinous crime.” Emma snatches her red leather coat from the banister as she stalks toward the door, the heels of her boots echoing in the foyer. “I’ll decide in the car.”

“Miss Swan, you will do nothing of the sort.” Outrage is present in Regina’s voice and Emma whirls back around at the command.

“Back to Miss Swan now, huh? And you don’t tell me what to do.” Emma reminds her angrily as she yanks on the coat, still intent on exiting the premises. How Regina managed to piss her off this much is still a mystery to her. After all, they have known each other for 5 years, one would think that Emma’s tolerance for Her Majesty would have grown by now.

“When you are acting like a petulant child, do not be surprised when I treat you like one.” Regina hisses. Her arms folded across her chest and her face flushed with anger. But Emma can tell, by the way her middle finger rubs at the nail on her pointer finger, that Regina is also anxious. Regina’s idiosyncrasies are something that Emma had come to notice like the back of her own hand the closer she and Regina became. When the Mayor is upset, she hovers her hand over her stomach; when she’s anxious, she rubs her fingers. Most people likely wouldn’t have noticed - the Mayor runs a tight ship on her own emotions- but not Emma. Emma notices everything; which is probably part of the reason why they are yelling at each other in the middle of the foyer after having a nice dinner with their son earlier that evening.

Emma is still too angry to care so she stalks closer, fire blazing in her eyes. “Oh that’s real rich, coming from you!”

Regina’s eyebrows furrow. “And just what is that supposed to mean?”

“Don’t act like you don’t know. You’re being a brat.” Emma knows the name calling is only going to fire Regina up more but she can’t help it and rushes to continue. “All I asked for was one goddamn dinner.”

“And you know very well my thoughts on the matter, Emma.” And Emma does know her thoughts on the matter, she just doesn’t understand them. Which means that they came back to this same conversation, same argument, time and time again. At least once a month, she guesses. But this time she is done having the conversation. If she isn’t good enough, well then, she’ll deal with that and move on. It isn’t like she hasn’t heard that countless times in her life before now, anyway.

“Fine, Regina.” She forces herself to slow down. Forces herself to take this in, let her eyes travel down from serious browns to the flushed chest, heaving with unsettled anger, to the beginnings of lace and silk, a negligee Regina wouldn’t usually be caught dead in outside of the bedroom. She fights the urge to touch her, slide her hands along the silk around her hips and pull her in close. Fights the urge to burrow her face into the soft skin of her neck and breathe in the intoxicating scent of lavender and spice and something so uniquely Regina that it made her bones ache, even now.

“Emma, just come back upstairs.” Her voice has lost all fight during the standoff and is now just a whisper into the dark, empty foyer. “Henry could wake up any moment and I…” Regina gestures toward her attire before trailing off.

It would be so easy just to take her up on the offer and follow her back upstairs, back into the room she hadn’t wanted to leave in the first place. It would be so easy to just close the door and climb back into bed and pick up where they had left off, before Emma had suggested that apparently awful suggestion. Before the walls closed in around them and all Emma could see was fire and hurt and anger. Before she rummaged around the room, pulling her clothes back on much quicker than they had come off and stomped down the stairs. If Henry was going to wake up, it would have been then, when Emma cared little for disturbing the sleeping teenager and only about getting away from the woman trailing her down the stairs.

“I can’t.” Most of Emma’s bravado and anger is gone and is now replaced with something a lot like despair. Her own chest hurts at the words, as if she can acutely feel her heart breaking into pieces. Emma shakes her head as if words aren’t enough. “You know.. I can’t.”

“Emma, please. It’s…” Dark brown eyes dart toward the clock somewhere behind Emma’s head. “Midnight. Let’s just go upstairs and go to bed.”

Emma huffs, avoiding the urge to roll her eyes. “And then what? What happens in the morning? We go back to this again? This thing that I still won’t want if it’s not everything?”

The light from the upstairs bedroom that blankets the foyer catches the shine in Regina’s eyes whether Regina wants her to see it or not. She doubts that any liquid would spill onto rosy cheeks. The woman before her has more self control than any person she’s encountered in the 33 years she’s been alive so far. It makes her stomach ache to think about Regina crying, to be the one who makes it happen. Regina shifts then, arms dropping from their defensive pose to rest elbows out and hands hovering over a flat stomach.

“You don’t… want me anymore?” It’s a breath of a whisper, choked, as if asking the question physically hurts.

“No!” Emma rushes forward, arms out, but stops herself abruptly before she touches Regina. “Yes! I mean.. No? I mean..” She runs a hand through her tangled blonde hair, pausing for a moment to think, “I mean that I want you too much. I want everything with you. I want to take you out on a date, Regina. I want other people, aside from Henry, to know how happy you make me. I want to stop hiding this thing that’s been going on longer than I can even remember.”

“Emma, I…”

Emma cuts her off. “No, I know. You can’t. Or you won’t. Or I’m just not that for you. I get it, okay? I do. But, Regina, that’s just not fair to me. It’s not. And so I have to go. I can’t do this anymore. I’m sorry I ruined it. But I had to.”

She waits a beat, looking into those deep brown eyes filled with tears. But nothing else comes. So Emma does what she used to do best, she walks away. This time her legs feel as if she’s trying to run along Storybrooke’s sandy coastal beach instead of walk across a pristine ceramic-tiled floor. Emma forces herself to keep going, put one foot in front of the other until she reaches the imposing white wooden door. She clumsily flicks the deadbolt before she grasps the knob and pulls. The cold wind whips in and Emma shivers. May in Storybrooke is unpredictable with the weather and from the damp scent that hangs in the air, Emma predicts that they will have thunderstorms before morning.


End file.
